The purpose of this talk is to give you ideas and concrete practices to help people and organizations get rid of beliefs that hold them back from embracing the new paradigm of knowledge work.
For the past 10 – 15 years, many organisations have gone through agile transformations, mainly in the software industry. The success rate has not been stellar to say the least. The State of Agile surveys point out that management support and general resistance to change are among biggest barriers to agile adoption.
In my experience, the root causes for resistance of change and lack of management support are: belief of the importance of maximising resource utilisation, batch thinking and process roll-out positivism, the belief that new processes can be rolled out in the organisation and communicating new prescriptive processes can impact the ways of working for everyone.
These paradigms are fundamentally incompatible with the agile way of working. If an organisation tries to transform its ways of working to agile without helping its members to unlearn these paradigms, the transformation will probably fail.
In my presentation I will provide examples of how these paradigms form barriers to agile transformation. I will also describe my own attempts to help people unlearn these paradigms in order to be ready to adopt new ones. I will conclude my presentation by describing the approaches that I have found working to help people unlearn these paradigms.
My talk will help people in any knowledge work organisation who want to change their organisation into more agile mindset and ways of working.
From Red to Green: Enhancing Decision-Making with Traffic Light Assessment
3 beliefs to let go for agile
1. 3 beliefs you need to let go to
start your agile journey
Antti Kirjavainen @anttiki
Scan-Agile 2015
2. The purpose of this talk
Give you ideas and concrete
practices to help people and
organizations
get rid of beliefs that
hold them back from embracing
the new paradigm of knowledge
work.
5. 3 layers of culture
Practices,
processes, rules
Values (stated)
Assumptions, beliefs
(unconscious)
Source: Schein, Edgar (1992). Organizational Culture and Leadership: A
6. Why beliefs and assumptions are so
strong?
• Most things in a culture are built atop of
those
• Lots of connections with other ideas,
assumptions etc.
• Usually unconscious
• Conflicting ideas and assumptions do not
fit with the ideas and assumptions that are
based on the old unconscious assumption
• The idea with less sticking points has less
change to prevail than the connceted (old)
one
8. I used to design and produce games
for learning
• In collaboration with science teachers
• For primary school children
• ~10 years ago
• Agora Game Lab, University of Jyväskylä
• Problem: children’s misconceptions about
scientific phenomena
11. Misconceptions about Science
• Hinder the children’s ability to learn about
scientific phenomena
• The earlier conception has stronger
connections in cognition
• Scientific knowledge is inter-connected, new
knowledge sticks if it fits with the existing
assumptions
• A couple of misguided assumptions can
hinder the child from learning most of related
science (e.g. astronomy and climate theories
related to model of seasonal changes)
14. ”Delivering each batch of work has
costs, so it is most efficient to do it
all in one big batch”
Photo CC-2.0-BY-NC by Cameron Grant
15. Problems with batches or big
projects
• Assumption: big batches save money
(true, but…)
• Unconscious tradeoffs:
• Losing the adaptibility to changes
• Risks are discovered and acted on late
• Testing of assumptions is done in the end
• Scope tends to get even bigger – scope
creep
• Long time to market
17. Problems with specialisation
• Loss of information
• The need to ask something competes with
the fact that people are already on their
next assignment
• Leads to multitasking
• Task-switching reduces effectiveness
• Lots of unfinished work, which is
potentially waste
19. Keeping people 100% utilized on
planned work is efficient
Photo by Walter Parenteau
20. Problems with 100% utilization
• No capability left to deal with surprises
• Results in low predictability if there is
variability (= surprises)
• Often leads to multitasking
• Task-switching reduces effectiveness
23. Changes in an organization chart will
lead to similar changes in reality
24. Problems with rolling out new
processes, org charts
• People do not change anything in their
behaviour
• People do not understand the changed
process in the same way
• Lack of commitment towards change
• Hard to relate a modelled process to
everyday work
26. Problems with separating thinking
and doing
• People far away from work have hard time
seeing the real problems
• People with most insight on improvement
opportunities are left out of work design
• Lessens commitment on improvement on
”doers”
• Takes meaning out of ”doers” work
27. HOW TO GET RID OF THESE
LEGACY BELIEFS?
Photo CC-2.0-BY by wecometolearn
28. Problems with using logic to help get
rid of old beliefs
• The old belief has lots of connections with
other ideas, assumptions etc.
• The old belief is usually unconscious
• Conflicting ideas and assumptions do not fit
with the ideas and assumptions that are
based on the old unconscious assumption
• The idea with less sticking points has less
change to prevail than the connceted (old)
one
• Arguments against the old belief have less
existing allies in the cognition
30. Games for Learning: Experience
• Safe experience
• Distanced from subject matter
• Chance for the child to experiment
different strategies, theories
• Constructed so that strategies based on
actual scientific theories work better
32. Games for Learning: Reflection
Together
• Compare experiences from playing the
game
• Form a collective opinion on what
strategies worked and why
• Confirmation on individual observations
from group
• Connect the experience to scientific theory
(at this point the experience has provided
connecting points to the children’s
cognition)
34. Games for Learning: Application
• Application of ther newly learned theory to
another context
• To reinforce the newly formed theory
• I.e. Another exercise, project work etc.
50. Control by rules, incentives and
status reports is effective
Photo by Dneary
51. What kind of experience would help
get rid of this belief?
• To promote fostering trust instead of
building control mechanisms
• To demonstrate how command & control is
actually command & hope
• Please share your ideas on this with me!
Editor's Notes
If what we belief to be true conflicts with new paradigms, it prevents us to adopt those paradigms
If what we belief to be true conflicts with new paradigms, it prevents us to adopt those paradigms
Schein, Edgar (1992). Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View.
I first worked with the problem of people’s beliefs or misconceptions hindering their learning about ten years ago.
Agora Game Lab, University of Jyväskylä
Learning games in collaboration with science teachers
If what we belief to be true conflicts with new paradigms, it prevents us to adopt those paradigms
Schein, Edgar (1992). Organizational Culture and Leadership: A Dynamic View.